Sunday, 17 April 2016

La cerveza artesanal en Valencia

When I visited Seville last year, I drank some very fine
Spanish beer. Spain’s beer culture is young, and this is particularly true in
Seville; Ratebeer now lists four breweries or brewpubs within the city, but at
that time there were just two. Valencia is the larger, hipper and more
cosmopolitan of the two cities and beer culture here is far more established,
with a handful of local breweries and a fine choice of bars and pubs. You’re
likely to simply stumble upon good beer in this town, where bottle shops and
brewpubs mingle with tourist attractions in the city centre and restaurants may include ‘cerveza artisanal Valenciana’
sections on their drinks menus.

Birra & Blues is probably the most visible beer spot in Valencia, located in the
heart of the old town just moments away from the central indoor market. Though it looks like the beer is brewed in a different premises, the bar is very much in the vein of a US brewpub – clean and bright, family friendly, and
doing a good trade in tapas and coffee as well as beer. Indoor seating was, as
far as I could see, fairly limited, but it’s a great place to stop by for an al fresco afternoon beer whilst wandering around the city centre.

La Negra, their brown ale is very good despite some problematic branding. It’s full of cocoa, raisins and dates, with a faint
suggestion of coffee and some peach-skin earthiness before a finish which is ‘nutty’
in that it recalls the dry, bitter sensation of biting into a nut. John Lee Blues, a dry-hopped amber ale, has a strong candy sugar character along with
some caramel, and just enough savoury toasted cereal notes to reign in the
sweetness. The hop profile brings
peaches, apricots and mango and there’s
a gentle bitter finish. Sadly only available in bottles, Black Blues Abbey is
their interpretation of the Belgian abbey style, which is a strange experience –
initially bland, it then becomes dry and quenching before a very late and very
big burst of flavour. There’s blackberry, blackcurrant and cola along with a
little phenolic bubblegum, and finally some gentle roast and ash. It’s not much
like any Belgian beer I’ve tasted, but it’s an accomplished and interesting
beer with complexity far beyond its modest 5.4% ABV.

The aforementioned Mercat Central also houses Las Cervezas del Mercado, a bottle shop which is astonishingly well stocked given its
limited space - pick up some Spanish beers along with your smoked paprika, saffron and delicious juicy oranges. On the other side of the old town is the bizarrely named Beers and Travels – the shop is very much geared towards the beer side of things, though their website suggests they do book beery trips too. Here I picked out CCCP, a
classic session IPA from local brewery Tyris, which is beautifully dry and full
of pine and citrus zest – the sort of IPA that’s becoming unfashionable in this
era of ever-later dry hopping and rapidly receding bitterness, but still holds
a lot of charm in the afternoon sun.

In the younger, more bohemian environment of Ruzafa is Olhöps, an achingly hip craft beer bar
decked out in a Scandinavian minimalist style that reminds me of restaurants in
modern art galleries. The likes of Mikkeller and Brew By Numbers are on tap
alongside the Spanish beers, and there’s a small but tastefully curated
selection of bottles to take away. Here I go for Zeta Hell, a lager from Valencia’s Zeta brewery, which is a delight – clean and full bodied with
plenty of quenching carbonation and a spicy edge. Like Birra & Blues’ brown
ale, Paqui Brown – the name puns on Jackie Brown with the nickname of a Valencian footballer - from Tyris also has questionable branding. It’s
questionable in other ways, too – so pale that I can’t believe I’ve been served
the right beer. Wondering whether the wrong keg has been attached to the tap, I
enjoy the caramel-coloured beer anyway – approached as an amber ale, it has a
pleasant peach and sherbet hop character over a smooth caramel malt backbone.

At the nearby Valencia on Tap, the mystery is solved. As the owner talks me through the beers on
tap, he comes to Paqui Brown, explaining – “it’s a brown ale – well, they call
it a brown ale, really its amber.” This place has a lot more in common with the
unfussy locals bars you see everywhere in Spain, but with ten taps of
great beer from the likes of Founders and Hitachino Nest in place of the solitary condensation-soaked Estrella Galicia font.
Despite the name, the beers go beyond the strictly local – I try Achtung! Imperial Porter, a
collaboration between Yria , from Noblejas
in the Toledo province and the Bavarian Hanscraft & Co. which appears to have been brewed at Domus in Toledo. This is a
beer of great complexity – earthy and slightly tart, it’s full of black
cherries and dark berries, with a dryness that recalls cocoa powder before some
dusty, musty barnyard flavours round it out. Garage IPAfrom Barcelona’s Espiga
is a glorious burst of lemon peel, pine needles and herbs – there’s a
particular zingy citrus flavour here which I also find in Beavertown’s Neck Oil
and certain BrewDog beers – Simcoe, perhaps? The body is full, even verging
towards creamy, and extremely satisfying.

My overall impression of Valencia suggests a beer culture that's catching up to where are in the UK in terms of visibility. The likes of Mahou may still dominate, but a focus on local and artisan produce in general benefits beer - you can, for example, fill growlers with Tyris pale ale at the central branch of El Court Ingles. Not all the beers were hugely exciting, but I certainly encountered nothing rough, amateurish or marred with off-flavours. Valencia may be some way off becoming a beer destination, but for a holiday of exploring by day and boozing by night, I'd highly recommend it.